New Courthouse Junior head pledges to improve Ofsted rating

The new headteacher of Courthouse Junior School has vowed to turn around its ‘requires improvement’ Ofsted rating.

Nick Hart will start in his new position on July 5 and will set about improving the inspection rating the school received in March.

He was previously headteacher for four terms at Chalfont Valley Primary Academy in Buckinghamshire, which has a good Ofsted rating.

He said: “We’re not going to be RI [requires improvement] for long. No school wants to be judged as requiring improvement.”

“Obviously I want the school to be great but chasing an outstanding grading is not necessarily the best way of improving outcomes for children.

“Any decision we make will be entirely based on helping children to flourish not because there’s a descriptor that says outstanding schools do this, this or this.”

Liz Tarbit, who has been head of governors for eight years, added: “It is important, you can’t deny that, but we’ve always strived as a governing body to ensure that we’ve got an ethos within the school which is about success in every area of a child’s life.”

Describing his ambitions for the school, Mr Hart said: “A knowledge-rich curriculum and alongside that evidence of informed teaching strategies.

“There’s a lot that could be done that’s out there in educational research which isn’t shared widely with schools and part of the work we’re doing is to ensure that teachers are as effective as possible by engaging with research.”

He added: “I want to design a school around our most vulnerable children and make sure that they are successful.

“We might be in the RBWM but there are still significant disadvantages which some children have which is our moral purpose to address.”

The previous headteacher, Gerry Heynes, left the school in October after nine-and-a-half years in the position.

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